After 20 years of covering organized crime and drug trafficking in Mexico, investigative journalist Lydia Cacho knows their corrosive effects on her country as keenly as anyone. She was kidnapped and tortured in 2005, and numerous reporter friends of hers have been killed. She now spends a lot of time on reporting projects outside of Mexico—she is too recognizable to work safely at home.

It might be reasonable to expect, then, that Cacho would welcome any efforts to battle Mexico’s drug cartels. But after the Obama administration sent Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Mexico last month to offer American support, Cacho wasn’t optimistic. That the U.S. is sending military officials signals that drugs will not be treated as a social, health, or human rights problem, she says. Instead, the U.S. seems to be backing a hard-line drug war in which a rapid accumulation of bodies is a sign of success: After returning to Washington, Admiral Mullen said that President Felipe Calderon’s bravery in fighting drug traffickers is “one of the reasons the violence level is so high."

Ironically, in the United States, drugs are increasingly being dealt with as a social problem. “Obama’s government is sending the message of ‘health for Americans, war for Mexicans,’” Cacho says. “That is unacceptable.”

The tenor of American diplomacy in the weeks since Mullen’s visit suggests that Cacho’s read on administration policy was right. In the last few weeks, the U.S. has sped up the delivery of $1.4 billion of military and surveillance equipment, and pledged to buy Black Hawk helicopters for the Mexican military. It has become de facto U.S. policy to characterize Calderon’s domestic deployment of the army as “courageous,” a plaudit recently used by Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got in on the action, stopping by a military training facility in Mexico City. At the end of that visit, she “then, dressed in a coral pantsuit, …climbed into the back of a pickup and sped off to tour a Black Hawk helicopter hangar,” USA Today reported.

On the homefront, too, it’s been a busy time for American drug policy. But the tone here is rather different. The President’s new budget proposal would allocate some $64 million to the country’s drug courts, making it possible for more users to get treatment rather than incarceration. Attorney General Eric Holder has also committed the Justice Department to halting raids on state-approved medical marijuana dispensaries. And confirming just how far domestic drug policy has shifted from punishment and policing, the man the administration has picked as its new "drug czar" is Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske, who is famously not in favor of hard-line drug policies.

Kerlikowske’s stance is that fighting supply is ultimately ineffective, and that "our nation's drug problem is one of human suffering." Medical marijuana advocates in Washington State see his nomination as something of a coup. Joanna McKey, co-founder of Seattle’s Green Cross medical marijuana dispensary, worked with Kerlikowske’s office to amicably resolve neighborhood clinic complaints. When she heard of Kerlikowske’s federal appointment, her first thought was, “we are blessed,” she says. To Douglas Hiatt, a Seattle-area medical-marijuana lawyer, the selection of his chief for drug czar signals a new open-mindedness when it comes to domestic drug laws. “He’s a very pragmatic guy,” Hiatt says. “He’s not going to continue with policies that don’t work. He’s got enough intellectual integrity that he’s going to try to solve problems and not parrot useless nonsense.”

Given the softening domestic climate on marijuana, some Southwestern officials have wondered whether fighting the drug is even worth it. In December, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard suggested that marijuana’s illicit status is responsible for some of the cartel-related violence seeping into his state. His logic was simple: according to his office, 65 percent of the cartels’ revenue comes from smuggling marijuana, a business that’s only profitable because it’s illegal. Though Goddard, a Democrat, is careful to note that he doesn’t support legalization, he’s been calling loudly for a reexamination of our federal and state marijuana laws, especially given that marijuana looks like “health food” compared to products like meth, he says.

Goddard’s political enemies have seized on such comments as a sign that he’s soft on drugs, but he’s hardly in favor of calling off the drug war. So long as U.S. drug policy remains unchanged, he’s an aggressive advocate of attacking the narcotics trade in Mexico. “By supporting the Calderon administration in their fight with the cartels, we’re keeping it from becoming a fight on U.S. soil,” he explains.

It’s not hard to see why someone like Cacho would find that rationale unappealing. But so far, says Jorge Bravo, a UCLA professor specializing in Mexican politics, criticism of Calderon’s drug war seems to be confined to “journalists, policy experts, and other elites”—including him.

“If you go after Cartel X, you just make life easier for Cartel Y,” Bravo says. “But I don’t pretend that this view is held by the majority of Mexico.”

According to surveys done by Consulta Michofsky, one of Mexico’s leading polling firms, strong pluralities approve of Calderon’s handling of the drug war and the domestic deployment of the military. The president’s own approval remains at a steady 60 percent. And while his National Action Party (PAN) is trailing in advance of July’s congressional elections, its troubles are likely due to the economy. “It doesn’t appear that the Calderon administration is going to be punished electorally for the increase in violence,” Bravo says.

So even if the Obama administration isn’t keen on pursuing a war on drugs domestically, it may find that Mexico will remain an eager partner in fighting one abroad for some time. Which means we’ll probably see U.S. officials pledging ever more support in the Mexican war on drugs, even as they assert that some of our own drug laws just might need some softening.

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Congressional Republicans and conservative pundits had the chance to signal to Trump that his attacks on law enforcement are unacceptable—but they sent the opposite message.

President Trump raged at his TV on Sunday morning. And yet on balance, he had a pretty good weekend. He got a measure of revenge upon the hated FBI, firing former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe two days before his pension vested. He successfully coerced his balky attorney general, Jeff Sessions, into speeding up the FBI’s processes to enable the firing before McCabe’s retirement date.

Beyond this vindictive fun for the president, he achieved something politically important. The Trump administration is offering a not very convincing story about the McCabe firing. It is insisting that the decision was taken internally by the Department of Justice, and that the president’s repeated and emphatic demands—public and private—had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

The first female speaker of the House has become the most effec­tive congressional leader of modern times—and, not coinciden­tally, the most vilified.

Last May, TheWashington Post’s James Hohmann noted “an uncovered dynamic” that helped explain the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare. Three current Democratic House members had opposed the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. Twelve Democratic House members represent districts that Donald Trump won. Yet none voted for repeal. The “uncovered dynamic,” Hohmann suggested, was Nancy Pelosi’s skill at keeping her party in line.

She’s been keeping it in line for more than a decade. In 2005, George W. Bush launched his second presidential term with an aggressive push to partially privatize Social Security. For nine months, Republicans demanded that Democrats admit the retirement system was in crisis and offer their own program to change it. Pelosi refused. Democratic members of Congress hosted more than 1,000 town-hall meetings to rally opposition to privatization. That fall, Republicans backed down, and Bush’s second term never recovered.

Invented centuries ago in France, the bidet has never taken off in the States. That might be changing.

“It’s been completely Americanized!” my host declares proudly. “The bidet is gone!” In my time as a travel editor, this scenario has become common when touring improvements to hotels and resorts around the world. My heart sinks when I hear it. To me, this doesn’t feel like progress, but prejudice.

Americans seem especially baffled by these basins. Even seasoned American travelers are unsure of their purpose: One globe-trotter asked me, “Why do the bathrooms in this hotel have both toilets and urinals?” And even if they understand the bidet’s function, Americans often fail to see its appeal. Attempts to popularize the bidet in the United States have failed before, but recent efforts continue—and perhaps they might even succeed in bringing this Old World device to new backsides.

How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory

One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers. We are a long way from The Book of Virtues.

As the Trump presidency approaches a troubling tipping point, it’s time to find the right term for what’s happening to democracy.

Here is something that, even on its own, is astonishing: The president of the United States demanded the firing of the former FBI deputy director, a career civil servant, after tormenting him both publicly and privately—and it worked.

The American public still doesn’t know in any detail what Andrew McCabe, who was dismissed late Friday night, is supposed to have done. But citizens can see exactly what Donald Trump did to McCabe. And the president’s actions are corroding the independence that a healthy constitutional democracy needs in its law enforcement and intelligence apparatus.

McCabe’s firing is part of a pattern. It follows the summary removal of the previous FBI director and comes amid Trump’s repeated threats to fire the attorney general, the deputy attorney, and the special counsel who is investigating him and his associates. McCabe’s ouster unfolded against a chaotic political backdrop which includes Trump’s repeated calls for investigations of his political opponents, demands of loyalty from senior law enforcement officials, and declarations that the job of those officials is to protect him from investigation.

Much more than time separates the 27th president from the 45th: from their vastly different views on economics, to their conceptions of the presidency itself.

As Donald Trump’s executive orders punishing steel and aluminum imports threaten a trade war around the globe, Republicans on Capitol Hill are debating whether to reassert Congress’s ultimate constitutional authority over tariffs and trade. This isn’t the first time the GOP has split itself in two on the question of protective tariffs. But the last time, just over 100 years ago, the Republican president’s policies were the exact opposite of Trump’s.

William Howard Taft—in his opposition to populism and protectionism, as well as his devotion to constitutional limits on the powers of the presidency—was essentially the anti-Trump. Unlike the current president, and his own predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft refused to rule by executive order, insisting that the chief executive could only exercise those powers that the Constitution explicitly authorizes.

Among the more practical advice that can be offered to international travelers is wisdom of the bathroom. So let me say, as someone who recently returned from China, that you should be prepared to one, carry your own toilet paper and two, practice your squat.

I do not mean those goofy chairless sits you see at the gym. No, toned glutes will not save you here. I mean the deep squat, where you plop your butt down as far as it can go while staying aloft and balanced on the heels. This position—in contrast to deep squatting on your toes as most Americans naturally attempt instead—is so stable that people in China can hold it for minutes and perhaps even hours ...

The debate around sexual-harassment legislation is playing out in the Maryland General Assembly, where reform advocates say leadership is loath to embrace changes.

In Maryland, legislative sessions run 90 days, from January through early April. On the final day of each session—commonly referred to by the Latin term sine die—the capital city of Annapolis lets its hair down. There is dining and dancing and parties galore as aides, lawmakers, and lobbyists celebrate having survived the season.

A few years back, at one sine die soiree hosted by a legislator, a former Annapolis aide (who requested anonymity because she remains involved in Maryland politics) took to the dance floor. “I was dancing a little bit by myself,” she recalled. “All of a sudden I hear, ‘You’re packing a little bit more than I thought back here!’ I turn around, and this legislator is dancing right behind me. I was like, ‘Ooookay. This is a little weird. I know your wife and kids.’ So I tried to subtly move away.” The legislator followed, recalled the ex-aide. And then: “He got aroused.” The young woman made a swift escape, and, she informed me, “I have not spoken to that legislator one-on-one since.”

Scholars have been sounding the alarm about data-harvesting firms for nearly a decade. The latest Cambridge Analytica scandal shows it may be too late to stop them.

On Friday night, Facebook suspended the account of Cambridge Analytica, the political-data company backed by the billionaire Robert Mercer that consulted on both the Brexit and Trump campaigns.

The action came just before The Guardian and The New York Timesdropped major reports in which the whistle-blower Christopher Wylie alleged that Cambridge Analytica had used data that an academic had allegedly improperly exfiltrated from the social network. These new stories, backed by Wylie’s account and internal documents, followed years of reporting by The Guardianand The Intercept about the possible problem.

The details could seem Byzantine. Aleksandr Kogan, then a Cambridge academic, founded a company, Global Science Research, and immediately took on a major client, Strategic Communication Laboratories, which eventually gave birth to Cambridge Analytica. (Steve Bannon, an adviser to the company and a former senior adviser to Trump, reportedly picked the name.)

The Supreme Court will consider the rights of crisis pregnancy centers, which help women “imagine what the choice of life would be like.”

Abortion is back in the Supreme Court this week. On Tuesday, the justices will hear a case on crisis pregnancy centers, the facilities established by pro-life organizations around the country to counsel women against abortion. In 2015, California passed the Reproductive FACT Act, requiring licensed clinics that provide certain services—including ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, and advice on birth control—to post information about affordable abortion and contraception services offered by the state. Unlicensed facilities that provide these services have to disclose their lack of medical certification. A network of crisis pregnancy centers, including the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), sued in response, arguing that the government is violating their right to free speech by forcing them to promote abortion.